Introduction
Doing business in international market is one of the most challenging tasks as organizations need to take into account not only the economic and socio-political aspects of that society but also the cultural values and traits also. This allows organizations to better prepare themselves for making a successful entry into a new market which can offer significant opportunities. As you are aware that culture is considered as the collection of set of collective beliefs, values as well as ways of doing certain things therefore it may be important that a business must acquire a clear understanding of the cultural values and belief systems of the target market before making an entry into the market. As such this requires an extensive study of the culture.

India is one of the emerging countries in the world offering enormous potential to foreign investors as well as organizations to operate into the country. It is not only one of the largest markets in the world but Indian society as a whole is a diversified mix of multiple cultures and subcultures which make the country more colorful and exciting to do business. In this letter, I would take the opportunity to brief you on the high and low cultural context of Indian culture besides discussing some other aspects.

Low and High context culture
India is considered as high context culture which is less verbally explicit with less formal communication in the form of either written or oral communication. Further, in Indian culture, there are pre-defined boundaries of authorities and elders are often given the highest status and most of the buying decisions are made by the male members of the family. It is because of this reason that the Indian culture is largely relationship oriented where focus is mainly on developing relationships which are based on long term horizon and are of mutually beneficial for each and everyone.

Another View Point
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk outlines following characteristics of doing business with the Indian businessmen and how the overall behavior of businessmen in the country is governed:

“Indians prefer to do business with those they know.
Relationships are built upon mutual trust and respect.
In general, Indians prefer to have long-standing personal relationships prior to doing business.
It may be a good idea to go through a third party introduction. This gives you immediate credibility.” (http://www.kwintessential.co.uk, 2009). This point of view suggests that the Indian businessmen are largely interested in knowing the persons before doing business with them and expect that the relationship will be based on mutual trust and respect for each other. However, it is also important to note that with the introduction of more Westernized values in the society, Indian businessmen are becoming more flexible in adopted the values of other cultures.

Written messages
Indians may not be able to understand some of the slangs and idioms used in written communication. For example, writing madam or sir in salutation would be more appropriate rather than putting the name of the person. Similarly, Indians prefer to be addressed in more formal manner with lot of emphasis on the particular formats of the letters therefore writing with indentation would be more acceptable than writing in more informal manner.

I believe this would serve as a brief introduction to Indian culture and would greatly help you in understanding it before making decision to enter into this market.

Yours Sincerely

Mr. XYZ

Bibliography
1.      http://www.kwintessential.co.uk. (2009). India – Language, Culture, Customs and Etiquette. Retrieved Feb 22, 2009, from http://www.kwintessential.co.uk: http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/india-country-profile.html